private hacks and their hired help all togged out till
you'd think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of
sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, if _I_ got to play any
such game), and they're such great hands to kite around nights when
folks had ought to be in their beds. I tell you, my friend, it ain't
doing this town one bit of good. The idea of a passel of strong, husky
young men settin' around on porches in their white pants and calling it
'passing the summer.' _I_ ain't never found time to pass any summers."

The wanderer expressed a proper regret for this decadence. Mr. Keyts
reverted bitterly to the Bon Ton market:--

"Good name for a tooth powder, or a patent necktie, or an egg-beater.
But a butcher-shop!--why, it's a _hell_ of a name for a
butcher-shop!"

The wanderer expressed perfect sympathy with this view of the shop
legend, and remarked, "By the way, whose big house is that with the
columns in front, up where the Prouse and old Blake houses used to be?"

The face of Mr. Keyts became pleasanter.

"Oh, that?--that's Cal Blake's--Major Blake's, you know. He married a
girl that come in here from the South with her mother. I guess that was
after you got out of here. They tore down the two houses and built that
big one. They say it's like them Southern houses, but I don't know. It
seems awful plain up the front of it. Cal's all right, though. I guess
mebbe he built the house kind of bare that way to please his wife and
his mother-in-law. I'll bet if he'd had his own way, there'd be some
brackets and fret work on the front to liven it up some. But I'd a done
just like him in his place, I would, by Gee! So would you if you seen
his wife. _Say!_ but never mind; you wait right here. She'll drive up to
git Cal from his office at four-thirty--it's right across there over the
bank where that young fellow is settin' in the window--that's young Cal
Denney, studyin' law with Blake. You just wait and see--she'll drive up
in about six minutes."

The wanderer waited, out of pure cordiality to Mr. Keyts. The prospect
was not exciting, but the simple faith of the villagers that outsiders
must share their interest in local concerns has always seemed too
touching a thing to wreck.

Within the six minutes mentioned by Mr. Keyts the diurnal happening to
which he attached such importance was observed. A woman (the younger of
the two seen in the phaeton) drove up for Major Calvin Blake; a youngish